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The First Wave: Latin American Science Fiction Discovers Its Roots Author(S): Rachel Haywood Ferreira Source: Science Fiction Studies, Vol World Languages and Cultures Publications World Languages and Cultures 11-2007 The irsF t Wave: Latin American Science Fiction Discovers Its Roots Rachel Haywood Ferreira Iowa State University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://lib.dr.iastate.edu/language_pubs Part of the Latin American Literature Commons The ompc lete bibliographic information for this item can be found at http://lib.dr.iastate.edu/ language_pubs/7. For information on how to cite this item, please visit http://lib.dr.iastate.edu/ howtocite.html. This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the World Languages and Cultures at Iowa State University Digital Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in World Languages and Cultures Publications by an authorized administrator of Iowa State University Digital Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The irsF t Wave: Latin American Science Fiction Discovers Its Roots Abstract This essay examines three of the earliest works of Latin American sf together for the first time: "México en el año 1970" [Mexico in the Year 1970, 1844, Mexico], Páginas da história do Brasil escripta no anno de 2000 [Pages from the History of Brazil Written in the Year 2000, 1868-72, Brazil], and Viaje maravilloso del Señor Nic-Nac al planeta Marte [The aM rvelous Journey of Mr. Nic-Nac to the Planet Mars, 1875-76, Argentina]. Nineteenth-century works such as these have been added to the genealogical tree of Latin American sf in recent years. The dda ition of pre-space-age texts to the corpus of Latin American sf does more than provide its writers and readers with local roots: it broadens our understanding of the genre in Latin America and the periphery; it extends our perceptions of the role of science in Latin American literature and culture; and, together with later Latin American sf, it contributes new perspectives and new narrative possibilities to the genre as a whole. Disciplines Latin American Literature Comments This article is from Science Fiction Studies 34 (2007): 432–462. Posted with permission. This article is available at Iowa State University Digital Repository: http://lib.dr.iastate.edu/language_pubs/7 SF-TH Inc The First Wave: Latin American Science Fiction Discovers Its Roots Author(s): Rachel Haywood Ferreira Source: Science Fiction Studies, Vol. 34, No. 3 (Nov., 2007), pp. 432-462 Published by: SF-TH Inc Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25475075 . Accessed: 10/10/2013 17:08 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. SF-TH Inc is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Science Fiction Studies. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 129.186.176.122 on Thu, 10 Oct 2013 17:08:09 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 432 SCIENCE FICTION STUDIES, VOLUME 34 (2007) Rachel Haywood Ferreira The First Wave: Latin American Science Fiction Discovers Its Roots we Now have a historical consciousness of belonging to a global movement and, at the same time, we respond to this world science fiction movement with our own characteristics, with notable antecedents and with distinctive, complementary aspirations.?Trujillo Mufioz, Biograflas355 Retrolabeling the Early Works of Latin American SF IfHugo Gernsback's first act in the inaugural issue of Amazing Stories was to choose the term thatwould eventually become "science fiction" to designate the type of works thathis magazine published, his second act was to use that term retroactively to label?or retrolabel?a body of existing texts that he felt belonged to the same tradition: "By 'scientifiction,'" he states, "Imean the Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, and Edgar Allan Poe type of story?a charming romance intermingled with scientific fact and prophetic vision" (3).1 Although the genealogy of science fiction has been actively traced in its countries of origin since themoment Gernsback formally baptized thegenre,2 inLatin America this process did not get underway until the late 1960s and is still a work in progress. Like all such bibliographical processes, the effort to retrolabel Latin American sf has in part been the result of a desire for the stature and legitimacy that identifiable ancestors bestow upon their descendants. While Latin Americans c an point to northern hemisphere antecedents for their science fiction and claim that established pedigree as their own, their late twentieth- and early twenty-first century search for a more direct national or continental sf family tree represents a desire for evidence that science fiction has been a global genre from itsearliest days, thatLatin America has participated in thisgenre using local appropriations and local adaptations, and that this participation is one way in which Latin America has demonstrated a continuing connection with literary, cultural, and scientific debates in the international arena. But as an examination of three nineteenth-century texts from Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina reveals, the addition of pre-space-age texts to the genealogical tree of Latin American sf does more than provide itswriters and readers with local roots: itbroadens our understanding of the genre in Latin America and the periphery; it extends our perceptions of the role of science inLatin American literature and culture; and, togetherwith laterLatin American sf, itcontributes new perspectives and new narrative possibilities to the genre as a whole. From the nineteenth century to the present day, the sf tradition/genrehas proved to be an ideal vehicle for registering tensions related to national identity and themodernization process inLatin America. The challenge of constructing and/or maintaining a national identity in the face of significant input and influence from the North has been a constant. Latin America has also consistently existed ina state of what Garcia Canclini has termed "multitemporal heterogeneity" due to theuneven assimilation of technology (47). M. Elizabeth This content downloaded from 129.186.176.122 on Thu, 10 Oct 2013 17:08:09 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions LATIN AMERICAN SF DISCOVERS ITS ROOTS 433 Ginway's metaphor of science fiction as "a barometer tomeasure attitudes toward technology while at the same time reflecting the social implications of modernization in Brazilian society" is equally apt in describing a key function of sf in Spanish America (Brazilian 212). Association with the genre can be more costly today than in the nineteenth century, however. Having theirwork carry the sf label has often been a double edged sword for Latin American writers inmore recent years. If the name recognition of science fiction brings them an easily identifiable genre home and a ready-made reader base, that reader base is still relatively small.3 The label often draws charges of having "associations with 'low art' and popular fiction" (Ginway, Brazilian 29), of being a party to cultural imperialism, and of failing to reflect local realities. (It should be said thatwith the contemporary boom in thewriting and criticism of Latin American sf, and with a shiftingof genre tides away from the predominance of shiny, rocket-launched visions of the future, contemporary writers and promoters of the genre in Latin America are better able to defend themselves against such charges.)4 In the nineteenth century, however, sf was not so thoroughly perceived as an external genre thatwas unrelated toLatin American realities, nor had such strong links yet been forged between sf and popular culture. Rather than themore recent association with mass culture, science-fictional texts in the nineteenth centurywere read almost exclusively by the literate elite classes. They tended to be published in newspapers and magazines, and any Vernian didacticism was lauded as providing scientific knowledge to the reading public. While many writers in the young nations of Latin America sought to establish and make contributions to their countries' bodies of national literature in the nineteenth century, still itwas more acceptable to have the works of Northern writers as literary influences. This was a time inLatin America when the political, economic, cultural, scientific?and even racial?characteristics of as northern European nations such Britain, France, and Germany were often touted as models forbringing progress to, or "civilizing," the "barbarous" Latin American nations. The US was viewed as an example of a nation that had successfully applied thesemodels in theNew World. Thus an association with literary genres of Northern origin such as the Utopia, the fantastic voyage, futuristic fictions, the scientific romance?genres thatwere fast coalescing into the sf tradition?was more likely to increase than to decrease the cachet of a text. The nineteenth centurywas also the time inLatin America inwhich scientific discourse was the supreme guarantor of truth. In Myth and Archive, his landmark study of Latin American narrative, Roberto Gonzalez Echevarria describes what he has termed the "hegemonic discourse of science" as "the authoritative language of knowledge, self-knowledge, and legitimation" inLatin America (103).5 This legitimating power of scientific discourse would imbue textswritten in the nascent science-fictional genre with an additional authority originating outside the texts themselves. As in the twenty-first century, nineteenth-century Latin American nations were rarely producers of original scientific research, so the source of this authority would necessarily be This content downloaded from 129.186.176.122 on Thu, 10 Oct 2013 17:08:09 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 434 SCIENCE FICTION STUDIES, VOLUME 34 (2007) associated with the North.
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